Kabbalah, Seasons and Sight

A trip away from home can really open our eyes. Since coming to live in Tzfat we have become accustomed to seeing the men and boys around us all dressed in stark black. Yesterday we took a trip to Jerusalem, we traveled on the bus down the mountain, across verdant green fields, begging to bloom with the myriad blossoms of spring. The trip was such a pleasure since we have been trapped in the clutches of winter now for several weeks and the day turned beautiful and warm for us, giving us the blessing of nice weather and bright sun making everything seem fresh and new!

This afternoon I sat down and studied for a while in my Kabbalah the letter for the day which is Ayin ע

which is the symbol for various types of sight, including insight, foresight and the perspective of how we view life. I was reminded how Torah teaches us that in the ancient of days each village or tribe had a seer, someone who was revered by the rest of the people as the person who was able to keep alive in the community the ability to know right from wrong, to avert disaster, to foretell further events and direct people concerning many other things. In a book that I read long ago the seer of the village was the only person who never wore anything black in color. In fact, the mystics of ancient Israel used to wear crimson, gold, turquoise,white and fuschia because they believed that darker colors indicated a total absence of light and thus interfered with their ability to connect to 'the light' of schechenah!

I hadn't realized how used to seeing black I have gotten until yesterday! The city was full of colors, women and men in wonderful, glorious color everywhere one looked. So the Ayin today brought me to thinking, what is it that makes someone in the color black appear so stern, and sterile? Why is it that even the youngsters who are dressed in black look hard?

Isn't the absence of light, black? I begin to meditate on this in my silence with the Ayin before me and suddenly realized that indeed black shuts out light, light can neither reflect from nor be absorbed by black. Somewhere in my studies I also learned that a black lens can distort the light in your picture in such a way as to create a semblance of evil!

Ayin has of course a number, 70, it is the number of men that Abraham choose to work with him in the priesthood and its various duties. Reflecting on the instructions for the clothing of these men we learn that they were all assigned colors to reflect what position they held! Colors, not black! The mystics of almost every religion are people who loved color, they wore it, painted their faces with it, used it on their totems, flew flags rich in splendid flower hues and even adorned their homes with it!

Ayin speaks to us of being open, of using our eyes, both physical and spiritual to see TRUTH, to be aware of all that is around us, it begs us to seek out the tiniest of flowers hidden by the springs green grace and to note the deep rich colors of the earth as the seasons change. Ayin also asks us to search ourselves to see where our own true colors lie, if we are indeed made in the image of the Eternal than we must be truly beautiful, like a diamond with it's light spread out for all to see! We must become aware of how we look, not just outside but also inside. We must open up the chasm of our soul and let the reflection of the light pour through us.

Ayin asks us to bring into being the essence of light, color. Doesn't it make your feel good when you put on your first new spring outfit? Think of it! I'll bet that most of us love to buy the pastel hues of the spring season, and that we feel different when we wear them! I saw on the net the wonderful art in Central park, the color was glorious, I was particularly taken by one photo that was shot from a helicopter and showed the spirals of bright crimson floating against the sea of green that is the beloved park of New York! It spoke volume's about how one can use colors to bring new light and life into something which is otherwise so familiar that we take it for granted. Ayin asks all of us to do what the artist did in New York! Put some color into our lives! We are after all the reflection of creation in all its wonder, and we have all experienced times in our lives when everything seemed black, but when we come out of those times we seek light and color again as they symbolize the ability of life to survive!

Ayin,

the letter of sight, of seeing, the awakener of our sense of sight, the ruler of our eyes both spiritual and physical. We should all work on being filled with light, with the colors of the spectrum that is reflected from our souls center. Spring is a time of new beginnings, of new life reaching out of the old, it reminds all of us how we can become so used to seeing only black that our lives become mired in the quag and mud until no light can get in. Perhaps you don't have a whole day to go out and enjoy the budding spring, but maybe when you drive home this evening from work you could stop for a few moments at a park, or a flower shop, or if you walk home window shop at the glitziest store on the block, sense the color, let it pour into your soul the energy that is reflected there.

Simply put, Ayin tells us that we must stop once in a while and take in the beauty that is around us, and more specifically the beauty from within us, so that we can begin to reflect who we truly are!

Kabbalah, Kitchens and Knots

There is a heartbeat that runs through this place in which we live, it is a sure and steady beat that can be felt best in the the bustle that becomes Friday. It is baking day here in Tzfat, and whether by design or by the fact that one lives here eventually you fall into the rhythm of those around you. It is about four hours until the sun sets, and when that happens a deep rest wraps itself around the people here, and we gather over our tables to welcome the Sabbath Bride. It is a tradition that goes back as far as the recorded history of the Jews.

So for several hours this morning I baked, goodies not just for Sabbath but to last the entire week. The cookie jar is brimming with fresh sugar cookies, and peanut butter crunch cookies, a batch of brownies is cooling on the side and the Challah sit quietly on the table waiting to be wisk away under her white cover before the wine is brought out only to reappear in all her glory when my husband takes her from under the cover, slivers a little salt over her and says the blessing.

I fell to watching my husband as he cleaned the rugs in the living room while I waited for a batch of cookies to emerge from the oven. He went round and round in concentric circles with a small damp brush taking the weeks worth of dirt from the surface of the rug. I began to think about the way in which such a rug is woven, by hand with hundreds of knots being tied as the weaver blends the colors and brings out the design. The Kabbalah tells us that we are all knots in the chain that links us with all the Jews who came before us, all the way back to the mountain where Moses received the living Torah. I went back to my kitchen and my baking but the knot idea had taken root and I fell to meditating on what this knot of mine might look like if I could see it. Would it have bright colors, would there be Rabbi's or Cohains or ritual butchers, or bakers in my knot? Would it have strings of silver or flecks of gold? It would of course have some dark colors for the times that our people went through trials and tribulations, and there would be some stains I am sure where there were times that we didn't measure up as we should have when put to the test.

I came in then after the last batch of cookies to the computer and sat down to write something about knots, and Kabbalah. I took up Richard Seidman's book on The Oracle of Kabbalah which has been a favorite of mine for some years and shuffled the deck of letter cards quietly. When at last I picked one from the deck I wasn't at all surprised to see the Aleph in my hand. This is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and of course the Kabbalahists tell us a primary letter in the history of our people. It is numberless, the number that has been assigned to it over the years is infinite, it cannot be written the great teachers tell us.

The Aleph always has a special message when you see it, I recalled having seen an Aleph just last week at the beginning of a line of Torah reading and noting that it looked like a fragile piece of silver filigree against the background of the parchment, it looked like fire in ice! The Aleph is a knot א it reminds me of the wonderful Celtic knots in the book of days that the Druids wrote, it is a symbol of all that we are or might become. If you read about the letter Aleph you find that while it brings us to face ourselves, it also grants us insight. We can see the importance of simple things like baking and cleaning and at the same time catch a glimpse of the Divine in the way the Aleph balances itself.

The Kabbalah also tells us that the Aleph is a messenger who reminds us that we must not only nourish our bodies but must also nourish our souls. We stop and take time from the ordinary to experience that which is life. The knots that tie us one to one as human beings also tie us to the Creator Being, and when we see the Aleph with its arms outstretched it is a reminder that we should reach for that place inside of us where our soul resides and connect to all that is spiritual in the world around us. There are strong knots and weak knots in each of our chains and we are specifically placed in life to support, in what ever way that GOD intends, the rest of the knots in our chain.

As I worked on this piece I came to understand that the colors and the history of our knots is all there in each of us. We are intricate, delicate, wonderful beings who carry a history in our souls that ties us forever to the past just as it pushes us toward the future. Each of us, no matter where you might find yourself as you read this, has a place in the chain of knots that is life, we are part of the infinite number that is Aleph, we are the reason for the beating of the heart of planet earth. Some of us may wonder, I know I do, about the colors of the knot and what Hashem thinks when He/She looks at mine, but I came to understand today that that isn't nearly as important as how we view the way we tie the knot. We need more than ever to make each piece of the knot firm, we need to hold tight to those simple things that give us a rhythm to our lives and at the same time we must nourish and replenish our souls so that those who see our knot in the end will know that we did our best to ensure that generations from now there will be kitchens where cookies are baked, tables are set with the finest dishes and the blessings are still said over the candles.
We must as the Kabbalah teaches, make way for the Eternal in our lives even while we tend to the simple everyday tasks that make a house a home.
Leah PettePiece

TheTsunami, the Talmud and the Web

So life here is different than in other places that we have lived, here we do not have a television, the radio reception at best is poor, nor do two newpapers drop at our doorstep every day, we rely for the most part on the web for our source of information and of course because the community of English speakers is fairly tight we also rely on one another for the tidbits of news.

We read, alot!! I picked up a book this morning called, The Talmud and The Internet, we have had it in the library for many years but neither of us had read it . If you like the title I recommend it, it is a short little book but by no means to be taken lightly. It set me to thinking about the way in which this year started.

The Tsunami to end all, the tragic, horrific, destruction it reeked across the Indian Ocean is still being evaluated. In a tidbit of news from an online Israeli paper we read that there is an oceanographic survey underway above the epicenter to try and determine the number of sea creatures and fish that perished in the wake of this massive earthquake. One scientist said that in flying over the area in a helicopter he saw huge fish, octopus and other creatures floating on the surface in what he called "a sea of dross".

Then this past week we watched the news from home as the floods ravaged California where we once lived, and landslides, mudslides and other incidents of nature brought about destruction and loss of life to people who again didn't know that they were in harms way until it was too late.

That led me to give thought to a story that I had heard years ago about a Rabbi who protected his village with prayers and rituals whenever he heard that disaster was about to strike, and how he passed the knowledge down to his son, who only carried on the tradition partly and still was able to divert disaster and how it passed from generation to generation until at last no one really remembered the rituals or the prayers they only remembered that once those things had been and because they remembered disaster was averted!

Whether the aboves story is true or is only a 'folktale' it brings to mind that most of the world holds some sort of religious practice at it's center of being, and all of those varying practices have books which they feel are divinely inspired and from which they draw their individual rituals, beliefs and practices.

Here in Tzfat we see several rivers of tradition at work. The Orthodox,Chassid, secular Jews or the ultra religious, those who are Muslim, those who are Christian and those who are perhaps Hindu or Buddhist. Most of the rivers run peacefully enough alongside each other and share some things in common.

When one visits the open air market on Wednesdays to get fruits, vegetables and other food items as well as to have the experience of dealing with the various merchants, one sees the variety of the life of Tzfat in a closed area where all of us no matter what stream we follow are reduced to simple consumers.

We all haggle with the merchants and they in turn with us but all in all we come away feeling as if we got the best bargain and the best produce available! You never see unhappy faces at the market, everyone loves it, the colors the sounds, the smells and the haggling are all in good stead, and no one seems to notice what you are wearing, or how you speak, we all just flow with the day.

The Talmud goes back at least two thousand years, what is it? It isn't God given holy scripture, no it is the haggling of the pious men of centuries ago who argued over the meaning of certain verses of the Torah. They not only argued but they agreed and disagreed and then agreed to disagree about the things that are written there. It is a dialogue as alive now as it was centuries ago in which all the learned men discuss the sections of scripture, and the meanings of those sections which were written by the learned men who came before them. It is the web of lifelines that stretches back across the years and connects those of us who are Jews to the minds, the knowledge and the insight of our forbearer.

SO? You are saying by now, what has all this to do with the Tsunami or the Web? Well, think about this, for years we have known that all life whether it is plant, animal, marine or human is made up of five basic elements...CHOPS...Carbon, hydrogen,oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. And that all of life, including that of Giai, mother earth are interconnected and dependent upon each other.

The Tsunami may not seem connected to what has happened 18 hours away on the coast of California, nor to the volcanoes which sprung to life unexpectedly in the mountains of South America, or to the floods in the plains of the US, or the floods in countries in Europe who should be experiencing winter, or the snow slide in the mountains in Utah, but the pious men who studied and argued the scripture that became the Talmud if they were here would tell you that these events are not only connected but that no one should be surprised by the fact that they have happened. And with the modernization of today's technology a quick search of the web, (the net with which we all discuss, argue, dialogue and communicate), will reveal that although the scientific minds of the world are trying hard to make sense of all these cataclysmic events, the news media of the super powers are doing their best to make us all believe that none of it is connected so we shouldn't worry.

Sitting here on our mountain top, we scan the sky and see a tiny trace of rain, we need rain, we are in fact desperate for it. We watch the sky in the morning as the sun rises and see a moon too high, for the hour of the day and a sun bright and warm which should not come this time of year and we wonder. No Connection? Then just yesterday we caught a tiny bit of news from a scientific web site that is run by some of the worlds best scientist, and collaborates with NASA, the earth is off her axis at the pole by one inch. One inch might not seem like much but the earthquake that caused the Tsunami was responsible for the one thing that might affect all of us, the tiny tilt of our axis from it's original position. No Connection?

Think about it, try to look into your own religious writings, whatever your tradition, search out the bits and pieces of what has happened over the past month and see what you think. We like the Rabbi's of the Talmud should be discussing, agreeing, disagreeing and agreeing to disagree, but what we should not be doing in these hours of our dear planets travail is to sit idle, and believe what the news media tells us. We should all be actively searching the sacred texts of our own faiths and trying to put together some sense of all of it. We should be calling upon our God, whatever the name might be to give us insight and foresight and most of all to aide us in this time when so many are finding their faith so stretched and torn by the tragedies which have befallen them.

Even When the Storms Rage

This past week brought a great storm to our area, all of Israel is in need of rain so we welcome it whenever it comes. The usual trip to Carmiel which takes about twenty five minutes dragged into almost an hour as the ride home was hampered by dense fog and sheets of rain so heavy that the roads literally were awash.
It reminded us that Hashem is both a mother and a father. The good mother was providing the earth with the most important element of life...water. Then when we tuned into the news on the computer we saw that in the ravaged areas of the Indian ocean, where they had seemingly already had all the water they could possibly stand, it was also raining in torrents and hampering the relief efforts. I am sure that the people there didn't thank Hashem for the rain, in fact I wonder if their faith hasn't been tested almost to the breaking point.
Long years ago, when enduring a personal trial that challenged every belief that I had formed over my life, I remember screaming at Hashem over the conditions of my life. There was a very good friend of mine standing by my side at the time and she whispered to me, " He is present, even when the Storms Rage about us! Even when the darkness of evil in the world is almost more than we can bear, even in the most unexpected and unbelievable conditions, He is present."
The storm was fierce, the clouds dumped so much rain in such a short period of time that the steps leading down to our courtyard entry became a waterfall, rushing over the stone steps so fast that one could hardly stand up while trying to get down them, coming home we expected a dry warm house, and found that indeed it was pretty warm but the water had invaded our bedroom and living room, so today Theo is busy refitting the window seals and putting in splash guards to prevent a recurrence of this situation.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could put in a system that warned the world of any impending storms, like those suffered in the East Indian Ocean this past week? What if God had fitted the world with such a system that we would be warned ahead of time if destructive storms of nature or disease or disaster or evil was coming and all we had to do was stop and pray and that would take care of us?
Sitting here in this very spiritual place, we often talk about how evil has gotten such a strong foothold here on earth. The other evening during one of these talks, we remembered that once there was a Swami who believed that if he could get all the people on earth to sit still and meditate all at the same time for one solid hour we would call down Nervana!
We admit that this was at best, one man's idea, but...what if all of us stopped at the same time all over the world and just thought good thoughts, or prayed or chanted or read something spiritual for one hour...don't you wonder what would happen if we could accomplish that?
Even when the Storms Rage...the One who created all of this earth is present, he/she is in the thunder, the rain and Yes,even the sunami...hard to believe as it may seem, it is true.

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Letters on Peace from Tzfat, Israel

We live on a hill facing the world, off course not literally the whole world, but the sights that we can see from our windows are amazing. We never cease to be amazed by the clouds drifting past, the birds who at first do not see the windows and at the last minute turn to avoid crashing into them. We see weather here which is fantastic, we can watch the storms come over the mountain on the opposite side of the valley of Jezreel and make their way to us bringing rain or wind or both, or sun and wispy clouds that hold no water!
We meditate a lot, looking out these windows. We pray here too, and sometimes we merely sit, a captive audience to whatever spendid multi faceted show God decides to put on today.
Where are we? In Tzfat, Israel. Our tiny little home hangs off the edge of the cliff above other homes. It's walls are ancient rock, formed in the beginning of time and carved out of the edges of the mountain over two thousand years ago. This is a place of heroic stands, of battles for existence, of wonderful historic value, but the spiritual worth of the place is beyond comprehension.
We came here two months ago to live out the rest of our earthly lives, we chose this place from a host of others because we felt a presence here of something beyond us, not a religious sort of thing, not Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist, but a Shechinah presence, a presence as if God walked here.
We have always worked all of our lives for Peace, in the neighborhoods where we made our home in America within our work place, in our homes and families, and now we want to continue that work here in Tzfat!
Well, you might say, if this is already a spiritual place what need is there of Peace makers?
Over the next few months we hope to be able to answer that and other questions that you may have about why our world is not at Peace, and what all of us as individuals might do to change that!
Please, feel free to comment on our postings, stay within the perameters of civility, and high moral standards when doing so. Postings will be monitored for content and the authors of this site take no responsiblity for any comments other than their own postings.
Thank You;
Leah & Theo PettePiece